The sirens blared, and the flashing lights painted the road red as ambulance 43 weaved its boxy way to the Denver county jail.

My partner and I threw open the back doors and wheeled out the bright white bed that glowed in the dark silence that always seems to surround prisons, like lips tightly sealed around a secret.

As we prepared to walk into the front of the jail, I caught a glimpse of the full moon filling the circumference of one of the wheels of razor wire. It felt like we were being watched by a giant spotlight surveying the grounds.